I sat against the wall, silently contemplating the situation that had been going on with the older kids who had been occasionally coming in every day or two.

The bad things about being harassed by a bunch of elven children, and the human kids they drag with them: One, they always want to pester Levin and Rolwen, something which the boys certainly don’t enjoy; Two, they always tell their human slaves to play with me and Tia. That’s considerably less annoying on the best days, but there’s a range to it, depending on who exactly it is “playing” with us.

The best case is when we’re saddled with the older ones who just kinda stare at us awkwardly, and then sit next to us as they watch their elven masters pester the boys. However, there are a few that are rather irritating. Especially a young girl named Elias. Out of all the kids who come around, she’s the only one who’s name I’ve learned. I learned her name because she sat right in front of me and pointed to herself as she said “Elias” over and over again.

The annoying thing about Elias is that she always wants to ‘take care’ of Tia and me. When she’s around, she won’t even let us wriggle our arms out of our blankets without immediately yelling at us and wrapping us back up in the cocoon prison. I’ve tried fighting with her before, but she’s incredibly stubborn. I could go back and forth with her for hours, and she’d keep wrapping me back up every single time.

And, of course, there’s the worst of the three issues with having the children fawning over us. It places the inequities of this world right in front of my face. I can’t say for certain whether or not the humans are slaves at this point, but at a minimum, they do not seem to have any authority to command the visibly younger (but likely same aged) elves they are partnered up with. It’s only going by behaviors, since I can’t understand exactly what’s being said, but I’m pretty certain I’ve never seen a human other than our caretaker telling an elf what to do. Meanwhile, the opposite happens almost all the time.

1¹ is more of an issue of conscience than the inconveniences of the other two, and for that reason it manages to linger and continue bothering me, even long after the children have left.

I would have previously said that it keeps me up at night, but I can’t really say that anymore. There’s been another rather strange issue arising lately that has me rather confused, and it has to do with my sleep. Tia’s as well, for that matter. Neither one of us has been sleeping for a while now. It started around the time we started to make some serious progress in our physical training. This makes it very difficult to figure out if that is a case of cause or coincidental correlation. Considering that it started happening at the exact same time for both of us, it was also highly likely that it could be another elf thing, like our ability to see in the dark, and it was a matter of age and development that just so happened to come up at the same time we started training.

Although, it could also be both. It could be a natural feature of our race, and our physical training just triggered it early. I suppose that makes some sense, especially if I factor in our ability to see in the dark as well. If we can see in the dark, we might very well be a nocturnal race. We don’t exactly sleep in the day either, though. This is all just strange.

Another strange thing is the lack of physical exhaustion. I just always seem to have the energy to keep training as long as I like and don’t even feel sore in the least afterwards. I’ve gotten pretty good at crawling already, and am about ready to start my practice on walking. I don’t even feel sore afterward, like I didn’t even strain my muscles at all. It seems like coordination was more the issue than physical strength.

That doesn’t really make sense at all, though. It definitely disagrees with the theory that elves are physically weak and can be outclassed for strength by a human baby. Did Rolwen… somehow get them on a weak line? I don’t think so. The style I’d dedicated 35 years to specializes in the gentle fist approach to martial arts. Joint manipulations, balance manipulation, and grappling are our specialties. I would have been able to see if he was throwing them off their balance, but it looked to me like he was just violently throwing his arms about, and even threw one of the kids over a strong line, the direction where his foot was planted and could easily resist a force trying to unfoot him.

That would mean the only way to throw the kid to the ground would be to just straight up be stronger than him, and not just by a little, either. Rolwen was sitting on the ground. That would mean he was not in position to exert the full extent of his strength. The elf kids were in a crouched position. They were not in much of a position to exert their full strength either, and they were slightly off balance. However, there were two of them. They were on each arm. And, the crouched positions they were in, while being bad for exerting strength against someone else, were the best positions possible for maintaining their balance and preventing the exact thing Rolwen did to them. I even saw one of them take a knee as Rolwen was flailing about.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Well, it could also be a factor of them being so young and not having excellent coordination. It really could be that they just lost their balance and Rolwen hadn’t beaten their entire exertable strength. But still, even with that, they ought to have been able to correct their posture to deal with the strength of a baby.

The more I think about it, I keep coming back to the conclusion that Rolwen actually would have to have been stronger than an elf who had the physique of a human 5 year old.

This was all too much for my mind. I sat and leaned against the wall, and allowed my hands to drop to my side, as I began the breathing mantra of the Earth meditation. It was the first phase of a five phase meditation that was woven in throughout my entire martial style I’d practiced in my last life. This meditation always brought me a state of peace and focus while I was training, but it also helped me to center myself and let go of frustrations.

I peeked up and watched Tia in the latest absurd escalation in her unorthodox movement style. It looked even more painful than what she started out with. From my outside perspective, it appeared she was just writhing and flailing about. But, somehow, all the strange contortions and rolls of her body each resulted in her moving in a single direction. It somehow seemed eerily reminiscent of the way a spirochete bacteria swims through the fluids of the body.

She had gotten very fast in her movements and she was barreling toward the wall in all of her rolls and pushes, and all this flailing was somehow propelling her toward the wall at a speed that was likely comparable to a brisk jog. She flopped feet over shoulders right before she reached the wall and then made certain her feet were the first thing to touch her objective. This motion quickly reversed her direction as the mess of limbs and motions that made no consideration for what parts of her body had to collide with the floor in very painful looking ways, to the inclusion of striking her face against the floor at full force, began to propel her toward the opposite wall.

I took another deep breath in and tried to stop making sense of her reckless and insane movements. I had reached the conclusion that there was no rationalizing the bizarre ways that Tia caused her body to move. It really was less like she was a human, and more like some alien consciousness had inhabited an infant’s body and had no clue how the body was supposed to work, and showed no hesitation at all to take actions that usually ought to cause her a fair amount of pain in favor of just achieving her goal. She hadn’t really even been putting her efforts into talking yet, just this incredibly strange form of movement.

I took one more deep breath and lowered my gaze to my feet. But then, my peripheral vision caught sight of her pulling some rolling maneuver that sent her tumbling feet-over-head, finally planting her feet on the ground in a chest-down position, sorta reminiscent of the downward-dog yoga pose. Then, she pushed off with her hands into what would have usually been another rolling maneuver. But, due to the position of her feet, it sent her upper body flying upward, as she started flailing her arms. She was suddenly in a very unsteady standing position.

She looked over in my direction and we made eye-contact for a second. She flashed me a bright smile before taking several very fast staggering steps backward and finally falling on her rear.

Did that count as her first steps? They were backward, and hap-hazard, but that’s definitely the case. Her first steps before she even turns 6 months old

She grinned at me again from her position, sitting on the floor, and I grinned back. I guess this means I’m officially behind on the development track. Guess I’d better start my walking practice now then. Maybe this will finally get Tia moving in a more normal manner.

I used the wall to prop myself up, and promptly took my own first steps while using a wall for support. Guess we’re going to start really pushing each other from now on. So, I’d better make the most of my time before morning comes and the kids are back.

Well, the kids being here isn’t all bad. There is one really good thing about how they keep bothering us. They seem to like trying to teach us how to talk. Especially Elias. I encouraged it too. I knew we were young to be learning how to talk. But, if she was teaching, I didn’t see an issue with reciprocating her expectations. I repeated the words in Elven that she taught me, and this encouraged her to say more words. Wrapping me in a blanket was annoying, but at least I didn’t need much movement to sit there and watch her as she taught me words.

-

The next day, instead of being met by the kids, it was that doctor guy who came back again. It seemed like it was time for a checkup, then?